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Braised Tenderloin or Pork Chops

A braised dish of tenderloin or pork chops simmered in a butter and flour sauce with boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Braised Tenderloin or Pork Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the meat

  1. Broil the tenderloin or pork chops in the oven until browned.

  2. Place the meat in a kettle.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Whisk in the flour.

  3. Gradually add the boiling water, stirring constantly until smooth.

  4. Season the sauce with salt and pepper to taste.

  5. Pour the sauce over the meat.

Braise

  1. Place the kettle on the back of the stove.

  2. Let it simmer for 1.5 to 2 hours.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pork chops (in the method)
Main protein that becomes tender and juicy during slow simmering.
Flour
Thickens the boiling water into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor into the flour-based sauce.

The step that matters

Whisking the flour into the butter and adding the boiling water gradually. Adding liquid slowly while stirring constantly keeps the flour dispersed, preventing lumps so the sauce thickens smoothly.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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